WILD DREAMS

Monday in the 4th Week of Advent
Lk 1:5-25

I heard a priest say that when a woman is in her early twenties and is single, her prayer goes this way: “Lord, please give me someone who’s handsome and rich.” By thirty, the same woman prays this way: “Lord, please give me someone who’s rich.” When she is already thirty-five and still single, the same woman prays, “Lord, please give me someone who’s earning.” But beyond thirty-five and still single, she pleads, “Lord, please give me someone!”

When positive answers to their prayers are long delayed, the expectations of some people are tempered and they tend to bargain with having even just the minimum of what they pray for. They learn to settle for something less. Experience teaches them to be more realistic and eventually expect nothing at all. Christmas runs counter to this tendency.

People who truly believe in Christmas are entitled to have wild expectations. Yes, wild! By wild, I mean, virgins conceiving without the help of a man and barren women giving birth even in their old age. God becoming human in all things, save sin, is the wildest dream ever. But they all came true. Mary conceived while remaining a virgin; Elizabeth bore child though advanced in age and was barren; and the Son of God became man.

It took more than twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, or thousands of years before God gave man what he had been praying for: the Messiah. No matter how long the delay was, there remained people who never allowed the fire of their hope be extinguished. They settled for nothing less than the Son of God Himself. They carried on the “wild dream” of Christmas. And they were proven right for dreaming so wildly.

If Christmas were to remain in our hearts, we must never stop dreaming. We must dream even for the impossible. I can almost hear my bishop, Archbishop Gaudencio B. Rosales, saying, “Bob, habang may buhay, habang may Panginoon, may pag-asa.”

Dream and believe. Believe and continue dreaming. Dream, believe, and act.

Pray and never give up. Hope and expect. Believe in miracles, but always remember that miracles begin with an act of love.

“You can do miracles
if you believe.
Though hope is frail,
it’s hard to kill.
Who knows what miracles
you can achieve
if you believe?
Somehow you will.
You will if you believe” (refrain of the song “You Can Do Miracles” from the movie The Prince of Egypt).